Animals with Cameras

Endless pissing around talking about how he did this, how he did that blah blah, he won't even shut up or have the camera off him for long enough to enjoy what little footage there is of when the animals are filming. It sounded so promising and interesting, but was a let down.

Gordon Buchanan can do no wrong in my house - he could literally come in through the window and try to gaffa tape a camera to my pets and I'd let him. What makes this particular nature doc gimmick surprisingly effective (at least compared to that one where they have like... a plastic penguin with a fake camera in it) is that there's quite a strong emphasis on the specific engineering elements which is fascinating and with each segment there is a clear objective that they're trying to achieve and in many cases the observations they make as a result are genuinely new to science.

Seeing scientists and specialists witness behaviour they've never before seen is rather touching and some of the POV footage - particularly from the manta rays - is legitimately stunning. That, combined with the smart focus and the aforementioned magical Buchanan makes it quite a special documentary series and certainly worth a gander. The only bugbear I have is a structural one - a need to constantly summarise, and re-cap which is more a "requirement" of the format than anything particularly egregious on this specific series' part.